


and though it were ten thousand miles

by xerampelinae



Series: my love is like a red, red rose [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Feral Behavior, M/M, Reverse Chronology, intimacy porn, playing fast and loose with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:00:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26904751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: In the restless flow of his dreams, he sees himself greeting Keith with “Vrepit sa” and an embrace that burns. Silently, mournfully, Keith shuts his eyes and turns to ash and smoke. Soft, pained noises fill Shiro's ears--Keith's sounds, and Keith's pain--as he attacks and attacks andattacks.Shiro only wishes he could wake up screaming. Instead he's trapped in a shadowed space, the same crackling frequency as the Black Lion and sealed within. But then he chokes on air and he wakes up.It must have been a dream, he thinks. It must have been a dream, but it feels like a memory.-Shiro's counterpart tothe sands of life shall run (and still)told in reverse.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: my love is like a red, red rose [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1486115
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	and though it were ten thousand miles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Strongest_Hero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Strongest_Hero/gifts).



"Where are we going, Keith?"

"Home, Shiro. We're going home."

-

Shiro wakes like looking up from below the surface of the sea: catching glimmers of light and life beyond the ever-shifting surface that slip quickly away before appearing once more. He can catch awareness enough for recognition, nothing more. Keith looks down at him, familiar and not. Wilder looking. Older. Just as fond.

“Everything’s alright, Shiro,” Keith says in a low and intimate tone. He latches onto it. It sounds like home, like the way Keith’s hand feels when Shiro’s been craving his touch. Before he realizes it his face is tipping into Keith’s palm. Something in his chest feels overfull and warm, easily soothing shapeless worries, and Shiro should know what it all means but he’s so tired.

“I have you,” Keith promises, thumb sliding through the stubble on Shiro’s cheek. Too long to catch or rasp at the whorls and calluses tracing Keith’s fingers--an oddness that Shiro can’t track before fatigue sweeps it away. A long curtain of hair spills over Keith’s armored shoulder, hides the new scar cutting down his cheek to fade and disappear where the flight suit begins. “We’re alright, Shiro. Rest.”

Shiro wants nothing more than to hide himself within the new length of Keith’s hair and find the soft scent of his skin there, but obeys. How could he not, for Keith?

How could he not?

_Let us go then, you and I,_ he thinks dreamily. The softness of Keith’s eyes follows Shiro down and drowns him sweetly.

-

In the restless fever dreams that subsume Shiro, he remembers Keith’s voice. It’s a knife that cuts cleanly through the mental fog, through Shiro’s yearning heart as he struggles helplessly to surface.

“ _Please,_ ” Keith begs, voice stitching through each hazy layer of confusion. Like he’s trying to put Shiro back together. But only if Shiro wants it, as he wants it. He can remember the way guardians and old lovers had wanted him to live quietly and stretch out the number of his days. This is more like the fire that sent Shiro hurtling through the stars, raging quietly against fading strength for the sake of leaving a trace, for forging new paths through untrod space. “ _I--you can’t do this to me_ again.”

And Shiro listens--both of him, the Shiro that lingered in the suspension of the Black Lion’s consciousness, and the other Shiro, distorted by the witch’s will--and obeys. He’s never been able to deny Keith much of anything, has never wanted to.

This is something both Shiros agree upon: their early death is an inevitability, and if it makes a difference, if it will save Keith’s life, the cost is worth it. But Keith has never wanted that. Will never want that.

“Nothing is worth Shiro’s pain,” Keith had said once. Shiro had heard it later, hadn’t been meant to hear it; to Shiro, nothing is worth Keith’s pain, nor his willingness to face death for Shiro’s sake.

“Keith,” Shiro says, trying to perform the Herculean task of lifting his head, opening his eyes in search of him. Shiro drifts in the suspended time until a bare hand strokes down his temple to cup his jaw.

“I’m here, Shiro,” Keith rumbles with his new, deeper voice. "I'm here."

-

Shiro sighs into the balmy air rushing through the cabin, hand clenching around a strong thigh and relaxing again. He feels languid and lethargic. There’s no laughter at his touch, but he knows the smile on Keith’s face before he opens his eyes and looks: joyous, and unguarded. One hand remains guiding the steering wheel but Keith drops the other to his lap. Shiro's hand skims forward and suddenly they’re holding hands, fond and familiar.

Sighing drowsily, Shiro remembers that he’s never known Keith like this, has never been in a car with Keith. His face is the same, only reshaped with the passing of new years; same slim waist, only set now below broader shoulders. Keith is a dream to look at, but the ease with which he and Shiro touch each other is familiar. If this is a dream it is a kind one. Lately he’s been having so many dreams of being callous and cruel, of being outside of himself trying to hurt _Keith._

In the night cycle, Keith carries Shiro into the heart of the Black Lion and tucks them into the bunk together. Keith’s body heat is a familiar comfort, all the more precious for the chill his own body feels, like it’s in recovery from some long, great illness. From a hard battle.

“Is she your mother?” Shiro asks one night, fighting through the heavy grasp of sleep. Krolia checks on them--not every night, but often enough--and distracts the space wolf when Shiro is overwhelmed. He’s been wondering: memory, or dream?

So much of the other Shiro’s experiences seem unreal. There are events he knows twice over, from two different sets of eyes that each saw and perceived differently. They are each Shiro but not quite; that’s the hardest part to reconcile mentally.

And then there are the parts where Shiro was awake but not awake. Looking outward through the Black Lion's eyes was its own filter--wishing to act, but immaterial to the world outside--and only when he was most desperate could his will translate into the Black Lion's movement. It was like the nightmares that he had as a kid, before the doctors had found a treatment that mitigated the worst of the symptoms. Motionless and silenced as the world moved around him, without him.

Keith presses a fond kiss to Shiro’s temple. They’re lying so closely together he hardly has to move to do so. They could be closer, but even this is good. With another--with any other--Shiro would be coming out of his skin with the need to have space and be apart, but he knows that Keith will settle back and let him breathe; Keith is always attentive, and he doesn’t demand in the way that Shiro knows from so many days before the Kerberos launch. Keith worries but does not constrict with desperate, fearful close-clutch. “Yes, she is.”

“I’m glad you found her,” Shiro says, voice softening. He’s asleep before Keith can say anything more.

-

Shiro is watching through another’s eyes. The edges of his vision turn violet and blur with the turning of different stars. Somewhere, far beyond him Keith is falling like a meteor through the heavens, trailing fire and stardust. It’s beautiful and it’s terrible. It’s self-sacrifice. Shiro can do nothing but watch.

Energy gathers and strikes. There must be a shockwave--even with his eyes closed, Keith can feel the change and pulls up in time. He lives.

Even so distantly, Shiro can hear the frantic pound of Keith's heart. Naxzela, he thinks. Voltron trapped on a planet transformed into a bomb. How strange are the things that Shiro knows without experiencing: the bleed of Keith's hidden pain, subsumed by the demands of resolution and revelry; the absolute belief the other Shiro had had in Keith's capacity to save him again and again without end; and Shiro's own memory, searching distantly and desperately through the Black Lion's eyes. 

For all else that Lotor did, Shiro owes gratitude for the way he'd saved Keith then. And Shiro wonders, remembering the thin, stressed press of Keith's mouth and how it had remained closed around everything of himself that he offers up and risks for the future's sake. How many times, Shiro wonders, has Keith put the whole of himself forward? How many times has Keith been ready to give up his life for the Blades, for Voltron, for the universe? For--for Shiro himself?

After--Shiro is so, so tired, he cannot keep watching Keith. His eyesight wavers and his vision flickers black, void-like space and violet stars. 

In the restless flow of his dreams, he sees himself greeting Keith with “Vrepit sa” and an embrace that burns. Silently, mournfully, Keith shuts his eyes and turns to ash and smoke. Soft, pained noises fill Shiro's ears--Keith's sounds, and Keith's pain--as he attacks and attacks and _attacks._

Shiro only wishes he could wake up screaming. Instead he's trapped in a shadowed space, the same crackling frequency as the Black Lion and sealed within. But then he chokes on air and he wakes up. 

It must have been a dream, he thinks. It must have been a dream, but it feels like a memory.

-

Keith is beautiful. He always has been, but it steals Shiro’s breath now. Sometimes literally. 

They never sparred in the cell. Everything was too new, too spare. Too much hurt. And then when they might have trusted each other to it--they might have killed each other for Haggar’s amusement, but didn’t. 

The rest of the Paladins are a different story. Hunk, Lance, and Pidge require a defter touch: it’ll take a crash course in rules of engagement to keep them alive, but not something that would swiftly smother their ambitions to improve. They’re not totally unskilled, after all. The Garrison wouldn’t keep them in their training tracks if they weren’t performing in weapons and melee courses. For all that she acts as a derisive drill sergeant, Allura has her own cache of skills, and strength beyond a human's. But Keith--watching him fight a training sentry is indescribable--is honed and strong as wildfire. 

In the days after the cell, sparring with Keith was its own joy. Shiro spent years in hand to hand combat training and never trusted himself or another to fight so intensely and trust that neither would seriously hurt the other. He’s a brutal fighter; he wasn't always, even with his drive to excel, but those countless days in the arena transformed him. Keith can keep up with him. Together, they can push further and still trust that this is someone who won’t truly hurt them. It’s addictive.

-

“I would lay down my life for you, Shiro,” Keith says. His eyes brim with tears that Shiro can’t stop; he can only cup Keith’s cheek and catch the tears when they slide down his cheeks.

“I don’t want that,” Shiro says, because if nothing else he must make this clear. “All I want is _you.”_

-

The thing is, Keith never asks how much Shiro remembers of the time his eyes burned yellow and he survived by being sharp in tooth and claw. Keith doesn’t ask why it was so important for Shiro to put his body between him and danger, why Shiro made his home in Keith’s arms when they had the semblance of safety.

Shiro doesn’t know what he would say if Keith asked. What he remembers is anchored in sensory memory: two bodies sheltered together, _or_ hands that are gentle and unsure but overwhelmingly kind, _or_ something small and hurt, to be taken care of, _or._ It’s a near-infinite list of non-reasons.

Maybe this has been their path from the beginning--from their quiet introductions and the way Keith fit under Shiro’s arm, against his body when he hurt too much to fall asleep laying down, the yuzu smell in Keith’s hair before all of their washes in cold water muted that scent, before Shiro’s spilled blood overwhelmed it further. 

This is the oddness of sense memory: Shiro doesn't know how or why he fixated on those things, but he did, he does. He remembers still.

In the time that Shiro doesn't remember explicitly, pain is a lightning strike that landed here and there, sometimes small and many times large and lasting. But he felt safe too, at times--and loved. And so Shiro chooses never to ask. He knows what matters.

-

"You could go home," Shiro hears in the shape of his own voice. "You could--be with your family again. You don't have to be torn between them and Voltron."

The tension in Keith's mouth softens as it parts, as if to gasp. The rest of Keith's face blurs as if viewed through the veil of tears. But he hadn't cried then, nor Keith--not where Shiro could see him. 

"Alright," Keith says. "Thank you, Shiro."

Keith is a warm, familiar weight as he sinks into Shiro's arms, buoying his heart like the best memory turned dream. The others cluster close, laughing as they jostle to form Voltron in a riotous hug. And then Keith slips away.

Distracted by the clamor and demands of the people who should be their closest friends in this wide, strange universe--they should be, but are they? Shiro wonders now--Shiro hadn't noticed. He can't remember the way Keith looked when he turned back, but he feels the bleed of emotion and sees the face that so many had praised during his time at the Garrison. He doesn't know this building disquiet--this was Keith's memory once, and now it is theirs.

-

It should be impossible to trust Keith. Shiro can't remember meeting him, nor any of those early days on weeks spent learning each other, nor even any of the factors that brought them together. Still, Shiro will find himself reaching out, absent and fond, and tucking Keith close; where Keith regards the others with a rather cat-like suspicion, Shiro is favored with the way Keith relaxes into their points of contact.

In the hostile cells that fed the ever-hungry arena, Keith was a semblance of home. Shiro would have been desperate for that connection, that memory, even if he weren't unfathomable measures from home. He must have mattered to Keith in something like the same way--they matter to each other.

Shiro hopes the witch never finds out quite how much. He's not sure they could survive that.

-

He is sharp. He hurts and is hurt. He has to be ready, hackles up and blunt teeth bared to everything except for one. The one who is soft for him, the one who is already hurt and must be protected.

He cannot live by sharp of tooth and blade alone. He cannot. The door is open but the way is not safe--he snarls at the witch, pressing the soft one down low beneath the shelter of his body. Until the threat is gone, he holds firm. Protects.

Soft hands, gentle on his body. Searching. Pain, and the soft hands hesitating. He could fight back, _hurt_ back--he doesn't. He must be tender with this soft, hurt one. He brushes smooth-rasping cheek to soft cheek, and the kindness is returned. A flow of gentle words, tenderhearted and even-flowing as a sea of stars transformed into a bridge uniting lovers. Safe, together.

-

Shiro’s still catching his wind, blood hot and sticky under the open tears of his gladiator’s garb, when the door opens. Instinct has him scrambling to his feet-- _it’s too soon, he’s only just made it back from the arena_ \--and one of the blank-masked druids raises its taloned hand towards him. There’s just enough time to see the slack figure held up by two sentries before a crackling ball of yellow energy hits him; Shiro cries out and hits the cell wall.

It’s only a blast of energy, not a sustained flow, which means the rictus gives way quickly and soon Shiro is back on the floor. The taste of blood is heavy in Shiro’s mouth again; he’s dreaming of the crisp, clear flavor of green tea like it would wash clean everything he’s done in the months since the Galra captured him. It’s an idle fantasy that changes with every iteration; food’s safer than people, anyways, and what does it matter if the memory of it is naturally overwritten with each time accessed?

The cell door is long sealed behind the sentries by the time someone speaks. It’s the person that the druid had been escorting--more humanoid than Shiro had expected--speaking through hitching breath as he re-settles.

“You’re human,” the man says in the most generic American English Shiro has heard in about a year, voice low and easy with native cadence. His body is an exercise in contrasts: dark, wild hair and gently sunkissed skin, beautiful, narrow face aching with scrape and bruise.

“So are you,” Shiro says, heart blooming half fearful suspense and half relief at something human in such distant space.

"Half," the man admits, beautiful and somewhat bashful. 

Shiro feels an immediate, immense fondness as he tries to remind himself to be cautious and that this might be some trap laid around them both. Still he can't keep himself from asking, for seeking news of the planet he'd voluntarily left behind; it had been meant to be a two year mission carved out from whatever time Shiro had left, but now it seems he'll meet his end in the sticky sand of gladiator's ring or an alien scientist's arcane studies before that time runs out. 

Sooner or later Shiro's body will give out, and without the aid of the therapies he'd used before for the early-onset muscular dystrophy that day will likely be much sooner than not. "That means that they haven't invaded yet--?"

"Not that I know of," the man says, equal parts rueful and nervous, "I haven't been there in--in years."

Impossibly, Shiro believes this confession. Believes Keith, and trusts him too.

-

The boy is eight when he comes home from another stay in the hospital and his grandfather asks, "Why space?"

They're readying for bed; the medical team is often insistent on a more long-term stay, that it's for the best to have monitoring around the clock, nevermind how little sleep there is to be had that way. The grandfather always counters that the hospital would not be his life, and that this was something they would learn to manage themselves; until Shiro could take care of himself, it was his grandfather's duty. The doctors and nurses would just have to teach him.

In the meantime, his grandfather keeps Shiro engaged with the world outside of the sterile hospital walls. Medical research continues to march on, and Shiro's family hopes and expects him to outlast his life expectancy.

"It's cool, Jiichan!" Shiro laughs. "And--I think something's waiting out there. I want to go meet him!"

"Oh?" Jiichan says. "What's this someone look like? What's he up to?"

"Jiichan! He's too far away, how can I know what he looks like?" Shiro says, looking dubiously at his grandfather. "Gold eyes, and he can't talk because he's hiding from someone bad."

"Bad?" Jiichan says. "What kind of bad person?"

"He used to be a good king, but then something scary happened and now he does bad things--I guess," Shiro says, expression over-serious.

They stare at each other for a beat and break, laughing, then jostle over to the window together. The house is on the city's fringe, but every so often they can see meteors slip through the distant sky like starfall.

"Which one is this, Jiichan?" Shiro asks, eyes full of wonder.

"This is the Alpha Capricornids meteor shower," Jiichan says, "but do you know what else is tonight?"

Starry-eyed, Shiro shakes his head.

"Tonight is Tanabata--look, the skies are clear. Orihime and Hikoboshi can meet tonight."

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to bog gremlin, who kindly read this through and made many helpful suggestions on writing i've struggled since i first published this series. thank you as well to the strongest hero, whose comments this quarantine have inspired me to write sheith again.
> 
> i can be found on twitter @belovedbacon and on tumblr @xerampelinaekiss


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